“In the art of seduction, Parsifal will always retain its rank — as the stroke of genius in seduction. — I admire this work; I wish I had written it myself; failing that, I understand it. — Wagner never had better inspirations than in the end. Here the cunning in his alliance of beauty and sickness goes so far that, as it were, it casts a shadow over Wagner’s earlier art — which now seems too bright, too healthy. Do you understand this? Health, brightness having the effect of a shadow? almost of an objection? — To such an extent have we become pure fools. — Never was there a greater master in dim, hieratic aromas — never was a man equally expert in all small infinities, all that trembles and is effusive, all the feminisms from the idioticon of happiness! — Drink, O my friends, the philtres of this art! Nowhere will you find a more agreeable way of enervating your spirit, of forgetting your manhood under a rosebush.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
On this night in 1951 Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors premiered on television.
and baritone Richard Cowan (1957).
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